Page 6 of The Duke's Only Desire

When she laughed at the absurdity of that, he took her shoulders lightly in both hands and leaned in to place a kiss on the top of her head.

“Don’t worry, Pixie,” he murmured against her hair, before releasing her to follow after his brother. “All will be fine in the end. I promise.”

*

March 1813

Where the bloodyhell was John?

Shay stomped toward the stables in search of his brother—his irresponsible, ungrateful scapegrace of an older brother who sure as hell didn’t deserve the woman he was set to marry. Thewedding would take place in the morning at the village church, and Shay had received a month’s leave from the army to be here, so he could stand at the altar and watch his brother marry a woman he didn’t love. A woman who had no idea what kind of cold and selfish bastard she was marrying.

“John!” His angry shout pierced the evening’s stillness.

If there were any justice in the world at all,hewould be marrying Sophie Winter, and his brother would be shackled to some pinch-faced, ignorant harpy capable of making the rest of his life hell.

But when had the world ever been fair? His brother was the luckiest man in the world, heir to a dukedom and contracted to marry the most captivating creature Shay had ever seen, whilehewas the damned fool charged by their father to make certain it happened.

He was half tempted to halt his search, ride back to London, and let John flounder. But that would only cause problems for Sophie, and the last thing Shay wanted was to make this marriage any more difficult for her than it already would be.

“John!”

No answer.

Not that Shay expected any. His brother was an expert at ignoring anything he didn’t want to face. After all, hadn’t he ignored Sophie herself for the past six years since the contract was settled? At first, she wrote letters to John, which he ignored. Then she tried calling upon the family whenever Malvern was in London, but John was conveniently never there. Or if he was, he told the servants to lie to her to say he wasn’t.

But Shay had written to her through all the years, even when he’d first gone off to war as a mercenary for the Prussians, then two years later when he bought his British commission. He’d first contacted her only to reassure her that the Douglass familywasn’t the herd of monsters she must have thought them to be. She’d surprised the devil out of him by writing back.

He had soon found himself looking forward to her letters—a rare bit of sunshine amid a colorless war. At first, she sent only polite descriptions about her studies and her life in London, punctuated by witty observances and musings, until she finally trusted him enough to share her deepest thoughts. She rarely mentioned John or Malvern, and Shay certainly never did.

She had sent him little objects, too, that she’d slipped into the letters…pressed flowers from her garden so he could see exactly what shade of pink she meant when she’d described the blossoms, a strip cut from the underside of her hem so he could more easily imagine what her first ball gown looked like, autumn leaves from her walk through Hyde Park so he wouldn’t grow too homesick for England. In return, he’d sent her souvenirs from his travels…a seashell from the coast of Portugal, a set of castanets he’d won in a card game near Seville, a lead ball that had lodged itself into a piece of wood just inches above his head when his regiment was under attack at Barrosa. He had kept every letter and object she’d sent—a lifeline to his home in England—only to learn when he’d called on her on his way through London last year that she had done the same.

But it wasn’t just that which stunned him during his visit.

Sophie herself had simply taken his breath away.

Gone was the gangly, shy stick of a girl he remembered spying upon them from the library. In her place stood a beautiful, intelligent, and graceful young woman who was simply…golden.Vivacious. Confident. Kind. By the end of the afternoon, he had fallen in love with her. A woman who could never be his.

“John!”

The barn door was cracked open, and a sinking suspicion hit him for why his brother wasn’t answering. As Shay walked downthe wide aisle toward the lantern left carelessly lit outside one of the box stalls, his suspicions were heightened by the sound of rhythmic thumping against the stall wall, then confirmed by high-pitched feminine mewlings. He hurled open the stall door with cold fury.

His brother held a woman pinned to the wall with her skirts around her waist and his breeches around his knees, rutting away gleefully between her thighs.

The woman—surely a barmaid from the village because even John wasn’t stupid enough to tup one of the servants—saw Shay over his shoulder. She screamed, which only encouraged John to thrust harder as he spilled himself inside her with a groaning grunt of exertion.

She slapped at his shoulder. “Colsworth!”

“I told you, Cora.” Too much drink and exertion slurred John’s words, and it was a wonder he could stand, let alone hold her wrapped around him, or to lower her to the floor now that he’d finished with her. “Call me Malvern.”

The woman grabbed his face by both hands and forcefully turned his head over his shoulders.

He saw Shay and froze.

“Don’t exhaust yourself too much,” Shay warned. “After all, you’re to be married in the morning, and I would hate for you to be too tired to stand at the altar.”

John smiled coldly, still buried between the woman’s legs and ignoring her humiliated attempts to push him away. “Christ, Shay! Why should you care about that? I certainly don’t. Might as well get one last good go ’fore I’m forced to bed a virgin who doesn’t even know what a hard cock is for.” Then John turned his smile onto the woman. “Unlike you, eh?”

The woman’s face flushed scarlet.